


(Sing Me a Lullaby)

by misbegotten



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Angst, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-03-29
Updated: 2011-03-29
Packaged: 2017-10-17 09:20:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 603
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/175315
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/misbegotten/pseuds/misbegotten
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ariadne lives in Limbo.</p>
            </blockquote>





	(Sing Me a Lullaby)

She has Mal's knife, still slippery, in her hands. Ariadne drops it clattering to the floor and presses at the wound in her side, to staunch the blood.

There are worse ways to die. She can live them all here.

*

Arthur presses two fingers inside her, fucking her ruthlessly, and she counts back the steps they took via discarded clothing. His vest, her skirt lay tangled on the floor like their own limbs, and still she counts; until she can remember the sound of his knock on her door, the wordless way she had allowed him entrance; the shudder of his shoulders as she brushed her hand up his back; the silken lining of his jacket as she peeled it away.

"This is real," he says, bringing her back to him with the brush of his thumb against her clit. She can't tell if he's reassuring her or himself.

"Does it matter?" she asks, and his smile is sad.

*

Arthur leaves Paris for three months, and Ariadne pretends not to care. She throws herself back into school, and her professors kindly describe her work as fanciful. Miles is on sabbatical; he alone would understand. She's having coffee with another grad student when she catches sight of Arthur out of the corner of her eye. He's down a twisting sidestreet before she can follow, and she finds her fingers are shaking that evening when she dials his number.

"Where are you?" she demands.

"Rio," he answers. He has, as far as she knows, no reason to lie.

She fucks herself hard, eyes stinging, but release never comes.

*

Leaving her degree unfinished seems wasteful, somehow, though Saito has given her enough money to live on quite comfortably for some number of years. When she finds herself drifting away in class yet again, however, she packs a bag and buys a ticket for Egypt. The Pyramids tower over the horizon, a fixed point no matter where she travels in Cairo, and it's worth the shoddy treatment she gets as a woman traveling on her own to feel that grounded.

She's drinking bitter coffee in a cafe when Arthur slides into the chair beside her. "You look good," he says, and she grimaces because she's wearing long-sleeves in ninety-degree weather and she no doubt looks as bedraggled as she feels.

Arthur looks the same, impeccably dressed and a wary eye on the world around him. "You didn't call," she says flatly.

"I was trying to give you room," he offers.

"Who asked for it?"

Arthur wraps one hand around her wrist, rubbing the pulse gently. "There's a job," he says.

Ariadne laughs. "Of course there is."

*

They make a good team, with Eames and Yusuf. There is nothing as challenging as inception, of course, but jobs are not hard to find. Saito calls on them again for minor tasks, their names get around as people who can get things done.

The first time Arthur kills her in dreamspace, a quick bullet to the head, she finds him sitting at the end of her bed that night. He's discarded his jacket but nothing else, not even shoes. She draws him down the length of the bed until his head rests on her chest, and they listen to one another breathe until she slips back into sleep.

*

"I'll always come for you," he says one night. Her hair is fanned over his chest and he's playing with it idly.

She doesn't look at the chess piece on the bedside table. "I know," she answers, thinking about halves and wholes.

She closes her eyes. Mal's knife clatters to the floor.


End file.
